CIFarms has two bee hives.

This year, over winter, one of the bee hives died. It happened after the ordering window for package bees and we were left without bees for the hive. After discussing with my mentor, Jim Dolezal we figured the best course of action was buy a queen and split the good hive.

A new Italian Queen bee was purchased from Lapee's bees. The install did not go smooth (subject of another post). But both hives are now growing and today new supers were installed on both hives.

Our bee goal at CIFarms is to provide honey for friends and family and some of the surrounding community. With that in mind, our approach to bee keeping is different than that of many published bee keepers. We try to disturb the bees the least possible, while trying to encourage the hives to grow and be healthy.

So today, there was no inspection. 2 puffs of smoke at the entrance and a dozen sprays of sugar water on the initial bees leaving the hive (this keeps them from flying). After popping of the top cover and the inner cover, the super was laid on top of the brood boxes and the hive closed back up.

One lesson learned over the past couple years: keep the 10 frame boxes full with 10 frames

The bees will build comb in any empty spaces and comb where you don't want it will make everything more difficult in the future. YMMV, but that's what we do.